Let us say, and why not, that you just got broken up with because your boyfriend told you, plainly, "You're a fucking asshole and you've made my life worse and I don't want you around anymore." You might pathetically ask if the sex was still good, and, man, that's just dumb because you will almost assuredly hear, "You said you had a bigger dick, you liar. I don't want to fuck you. I'm done." And then you start to learn that nobody wants anything to do with you, that your reputation as a fucking asshole who lies about his dick has gotten around and everyone, it seems, is done with your ass. If you were a wise man, you might get reflective. You might decide that it's time to change, that maybe you need to give up some things you do and say and believe in order to find your way into the good graces of all those people who abandoned you. Or you could decide, "Nah. It's everyone else. I'm awesome and I'm not gonna change a thing."
And then you'd pretty much be the Republican Party after the 2026 midterms.
After having their asses and their heads handed to them on the same platter, you'd imagine that it might lead to soul searching, some reckoning with the cost of handing over the entire identity of one of the two major political parties in the country to Donald fuckin' Trump. But, no. One of the first things the soon-to-be diminished Republican caucus in the House of Representatives did was elect as minority leader Jim Jordan, a motherfucker who has learned to breathe while having his head shoved up Trump's voluminous ass, a man who ignores sexual assault, models sweat-stained polyester shirts, and wanted January 6 to work. It's like if you booked Russell Brand as the entertainment at your corporate retreat but he's in prison now so you went with Bill Cosby.
That's in addition to Trump putting in Stephen "Have white hood, will travel" Miller as chief of staff, which is akin to telling Republicans, "Fuck your losses. There's only one person who matters."
In other words, instead of making any moves that might indicate either a softening by Trump or distancing from Trump by elected Republicans, they've doubled down on everything that makes them fucking assholes. That's profoundly dangerous, not just because they will be throwing up every bit of legal fuckery (and, let's face it, some illegal shit, too) to hinder any Democratic investigations of the vast array of crimes that Trump and his cabal of greedy cockscabs have committed, often aided and definitely abetted by the GOP in Congress.
It's even more dangerous because it means that Republicans are going to enable, in whatever way they can, the final two years of Trump's gutting of the federal government, destruction of our alliances around the world, attacks on states and cities that don't bow to him (which are a lot more plentiful now), extravagant graft and corruption, torture of immigrants, murder, war, climate degradation, science denialism, and, well, all the rest of the shit that you know about. This is not to mention the way general rank incompetency is going to fuck up all our lives in small and huge ways. As Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer writes about the air traffic control system collapse, "It was in reality just a preview of coming attractions for a two-year horror show."
The demands will be out there for Democrats to "work across the aisle," and some of them have been talking about that. But the right approach is to ask Republicans how they will work with the new, huge majority. How will John Thune reach across the Senate aisle? He has hinted at it, but, mostly, he's toeing the Trump line.
If the Republican Party genuinely gave a shit about having a role in the future of this country, they would be joining Democrats in challenging the power of Trump's coercive, criminal presidency, up to and including removing him from office. I haven't seen a single Republican step up to say that they need to rethink their approach to anything. They just don't give a fuck about appealing to anyone who isn't on board with MAGA savagery. It's been almost entirely retrenchment and rage. Hell, you'd think that Republicans who were reelected by much smaller margins would have some independent thoughts, like, for instance, Abraham Hamadeh, who won in 2024 by 13 points and only by 2.5 this year. His district, Arizona's 8th, was considered a "safe" GOP seat, but it was close enough that it wasn't called until three days after Election Day. There are a couple of dozen Republicans who saw victory margins shrink tremendously (not including, of course, the ones who got their asses kicked out of office).
A Republican Party that can't have a reckoning, that is in deep denial that they are the problem with the country, is a political party that can no longer exist because it only exists to pull the country down, to obey a single demented leader, to punish those who don't agree with it, and to be a dehumanizing, destructive, and debasing force for ill. Democrats should be out there saying that they will be investigating Republicans in Congress in addition to Trump's corruption, ICE's illegal actions, and Drunky Hegseth, among others in the Executive Branch. They can say that Congress refused to act as a coequal branch of government for two years and we need to know if Mike Johnson violated the law by doing nothing about Trump's impoundment of funds with no protest, for instance. We need to know why Republicans gave up all its power. We need to know what they lied about in their bullshit "investigations." And those who violated laws need to be held to account.
I mean, fuck it. Trump's mob lawyer AG is trying to assert that Democrats are breaking the law by investigating Trump and his capos, so all bets are off. Go after the funders of the GOP, go after their dependence on money from foreign donors, go after the right-wing media that promotes lies, go after the way they use bot farms to spread disinformation, go after their messaging machines.
Make it so that anyone who gets close to the GOP is seen as poisoned. And that's not even an extreme position. That's one of the big things these midterms were about: the GOP is dead as a brand. GOP equals Trump. That taint is never going away. The Republican Party is anti-American on a basic level, like on an anti-Declaration of Independence, anti-Constitutional level. So finish the party off.
And if you're a Democrat who is asked about working across the aisle, you should respond, "Fuck the aisle. Change party or get the fuck out."
